Stroudsburg's Seventh Street Bridge party celebrates opening

Tuesday

Dec 18, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Horns blaring and drums beating, members of the Stroudsburg High School Marching Band led a procession of vehicles and onlookers across the Seventh Street Bridge as it officially opened Monday morning.

HOWARD FRANK

Horns blaring and drums beating, members of the Stroudsburg High School Marching Band led a procession of vehicles and onlookers across the Seventh Street Bridge as it officially opened Monday morning.

The band's musical selection, the college fight song "Hail to the Victors," was an inspired choice for a project that took a gargantuan effort of both engineering and cooperation.

About 100 locals and officials gathered for the morning's ribbon-cutting ceremony.

"This is good for business, good for people," said state Rep. Rosemary Brown. "It's really beautiful and it gives a lot of class to Stroudsburg."

The event had the feel of a gala celebration. Residents smiled as they walked across the span for the first time, taking in its architectural details.

"It's an early Christmas present for all the local merchants and residents," state Rep. Mario Scavello said. The bridge will be permanently renamed after a prominent local citizen in February, he said, though he publicly offered no details.

Monday's opening was a relief to some residents as the bridge was closed for 18 months.

It's not just a vehicular crossing. It gets a good deal of pedestrian traffic as well, providing access to the center of downtown Stroudsburg.

Her husband works nights and the construction noise would wake him up early.

"I thought today would be the first day he'd be able to sleep. I didn't know there would be a marching band."

An oversized stretch limousine followed the band along with two state constables. The first motorists to cross were a sedan and an SUV.

In the minutes that followed, traffic flowed smoothly in both directions as if the bridge had never closed.

"For downtown commerce alone the bridge will be tremendous, to give these people downtown some of the business they lost when it was closed," Pocono Mountain Chamber of Commerce CEO Bob Phillips said.

The bridge acts as a gateway to the downtown area, so its aesthetic features were important.

"We wanted to replicate the old bridge as much as possible," bridge designer and structural engineer Mark McShea said.

His company, McCormick Taylor, served as a consultant hired by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to design the bridge. The street lights, for example are replicas of those that line Main Street, two blocks away.

About 9,000 people use the bridge daily, according to PennDOT. Work began on the bridge in April 2011. The old bridge, which opened in 1934, was demolished to make way for the new one, which cost nearly $8 million and came in on budget, according to PennDOT.